Years later, trying to break a faulty vaccine connection

By Kelley Luckstein

With so many vaccines recommended for children these days, parents can get overwhelmed, even though the shots offer protection against a growing number of awful diseases. For one thing, young kids often scream their heads off during their medical check-ups, rattling parents’ nerves and making it hard to stick around for the grand finale of multiple injections.

To be sure, mistrust of vaccines predates Wakefield, said Dr. Gregory Poland, a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who called the Lancet retraction “an expected part of the paperwork” and a reflection of a long-settled matter within the medical community.